Final Post

We feel as though our blog does a great job at giving an overview and goes into some specifics on how the world of music has been changed by digital technology.  We learned quite a bit by doing this project.  From how sound is now recorded and manipulated to why the war against piracy warrants so much attention, we discovered some pretty cool facts regarding our project.

In our proposal we had said that we wanted to talk with professor Wiley Ross here at the University of Arizona who is an expert in music recording; however, despite many attempts to contact him we were unable to to pose questions about music recording to him.  Despite not being able to speak with him, there is still some great information on our blog regarding digital recording.

Our survey results were pretty illuminating, and we feel as though we gave a pretty comprehensive break down of the data we gathered.  Also, we had blog posts that hit the other areas that we discussed in our project proposal.  Someone with very limited knowledge of music in the digital age could learn a considerable amount by visiting our blog, which was a fun and interesting project to work on.

If we were to continue this project, we would love to talk to professionals of the topics involved in our project and get a sense of their expert opinions.  We would also give our survey to a much larger sample size of people to see if our results are consistent.

Digitizing the Musical Performance

The primary way that the digital revolution has effected the field of music performance is that it has given artists the ability to change their sound almost effortlessly whenever they want.  This ability has given rise to many new types of music and is a large part of almost every band in recent years.  Have you ever been to a concert or watched one on TV and thought that the stage looked almost like a computer control room? Did you ask yourself what is all that technology doing on the stage.  What are all those boxes and control panels, and what is that thing that the lead guitarist keeps stepping on?  The answer can be summed up with two words: digital effects.  All of those fancy toys on stage are what gives the band their sound, and they reconfigure them or use different effects for almost every song.  With the stomp of a foot a guitarist can change from a sweet, pure tone (think John Mayer's Gravity) to heavy, aggressive, over-driven sound (think Back in Black by AC/DC) simply because the technology allows for the change in the sound.  One of the most famous guitarists known for his use of effects in his playing is The Edge from the legendary band U2, and in the following video he discusses how greatly an awesome effect can add style and overall coolness to his music.  This is a great example of how digital effects have made an impact on the performance of music.

Music Survey Results

As part of our project we wanted to know how people were getting their music and how often, so we decided to survey a group of fifty people of differing ages and posed these questions: How old are you? How do you primarily obtain your music? How often do you obtain music?  The following graphs and charts show our results which we thought were surprising.  The first chart shows how many surveyors we had in each of the shown age groups.  The next charts show how each age group obtains their music, followed by how often.  The last chart shows the percentage of all surveyors that get their music illegally.  Take a look... 

 

As you can see almost half of our surveyors get their music illegally, which was a big surprise.  We knew that illegally downloading was a big problem, we just didn't know how big.  The numbers, however, do not lie.

Ways The Digital Music Takeover Has Helped The Industry

Times have changed and so has music. No longer is music bound to the device they were recorded to like with the old analog style. Instead, with advances in digital technology, our generation can enjoy the efficiency of easily transferring our audio to most of our generation’s favorite players (computer, iPod, MP3s, iPad, etc.) through its binary code system that coagulates with almost all modern music playing devices. This makes for great storage on multiple devices as well, especially after you have successfully transferred your digital audio to a computer where you can simply move remove your hard drive or flash drive and move it to another computer at will. With most digital media players, like computers and iPods, you can compile a library of all your favorite songs and reach them at will with only a few button clicks. The preservation of music is no longer a hassle either. With digital audio, that wear and tear you had to worry about with cassettes and records of yesteryear is gone because with CDs and MP3s you can easily transfer your music to your computer and if you happen to scratch your favorite CD, you can simply get on your computer and make a new copy of it! All these advantages make one wonder what music would be like if only we had discovered this before cassettes and records ever came around.  Either way, the fact remains that digital music revolution has changed the music industry and the listening world immensely for the better.    

U.S. Government Crackdown on Piracy Sites

Ok, let's be honest; most everyone these days gets their music by downloading it illegally.  While most think this is an activity that isn't that serious and is just kind of frowned upon like going five miles per hour over the speed limit it is, in fact, definitely against the law.  In the recent times this issue is getting more and more attention as we have learned in class.


In order to understand this issue it is first important to understand how downloading illegally works and kind of what it is.  Basically there are programs out there you can get for free that are known as torrent programs and they do what is called "seeding".  This means they are sharing your digital files, usually media files, all over the internet for other people to grab.  Torrent programs also work the other way by downloading those digital files to your computer, all you have to do is run a search for what you want and the torrent program looks for people who are seeding what you are looking for and downloads the file.  There are also torrent websites which are just sites that are just giant databases of torrents that you can download from.  Obviously there are some upsides and downsides to this kind of activity.  On one hand you can get stuff for free, but on the other this activity is an infringement of copyrights and is ILLEGAL!  Also there is the threat of downloading some really nasty things like viruses to your computer because you don't really know what people out there are seeding.


In just the past week the U.S. government Department of Homeland Security seized over seventy torrent sites in an new effort to get rid of online piracy.  I'm not sure of the exact legal specifics that allowed the government to do this but now when a pirate goes to one of these torrent websites instead of finding a link allowing them to download their intended file they see a warning sign from the government explaining that the site has been seized.

Perhaps this is a new wave of force from the government as they wage war against online pirates and this notice is seriously one intimidating warning that I expect will hit the nerves of many illegal down loaders.

A Change To Digital Recording

When you think of music recording what comes to mind? Perhaps a fancy studio with a lot of high-tech looking equipment, a giant board loaded with hundreds of buttons that do God knows what, and some giant headphones lying around.  While this may be a more accurate picture of what music recording is today we need to take a step back and look at where all this new technology came from. 

Edison's Phonograph

The first invention that could record any given sound was call the phonautograph which worked by sound waves hitting a membrane, attached to a pen, that vibrated causing the pen to inscribe the characteristics of the sound wave onto a palate.  While this device was revolutionary, it did not allow for instant playback of the recorded sound.  Thomas Edison took this concept to a whole new level with his invention of the phonograph, which brought recorded music to the public.  Through the years, recording got more and more advanced as new technologies kept rolling out such as electrical recording, magnetic recording, and multi-track recording made famous by legend Les Paul which allowed for multiple sounds to be recorded at the same time.

Nowadays music production is more digitally produced than ever before. Most often times the analog production is still made first but it is then transferred through MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) cables to an analog to digital converter where it is then transferred through cables to the Musical Instrument Digital Interface on your computer where sounds are all digital and can be manipulated at your command through the various different tools that digital production provides. These digital production tools include: synthesizers, equalizers, reverberation, delay, and sampling. The main digital interfaces/software that are available to society right now are Apple Logic Pro 9, Cubase 4, FL Studio 9, and Reason 4. The fact that these digital interfaces are available online and at local software stores near you has changed the whole concept of how music is made all around the world. High-priced studios are no longer the only means for production. Instead you have these interfaces available that make producing music easy right in the comfort of your own home. 

Project Proposal

Music has been a part of our society for as long as we can remember, and is continuously changing with time. Music has always reflected the culture of its age and geographic location, with our era being no exception. In our lives we have experienced what some refer to as the digital revolution, which has affected almost all aspects of our lives, including the realm of music.

The purpose of this project is to explore the ways in which the digital revolution has affected the music industry; including the way it is recorded, produced, distributed, and performed. All of these areas have been greatly changed due to modern technology and the entire music listening society is feeling the effects, good or bad. This project will explore in detail the new technology that is changing the music world, why it is a positive or negative change, and attempt to predict what the future holds for music in the previously mentioned categories of recording, producing, distributing, and performing.

To explore the areas of recording and producing, in addition to standard research, we will attempt to interview Wiley Ross who is the recording studio coordinator here at the University of Arizona for the school of music.  We will also attempt to visit or contact Subspace Recording, which is a recording studio in Tucson, Arizona.  Questions we will pose will include the following questions:  “What is your experience in the field of music recording?”, “Since the start of your career how has recording/producing music changed?”, “How has the latest digital technology in music recording changed the way people are recording either professionally or on their own?”  We are hoping that through our research and interviews we can present a very insightful report on how the digital revolution is changing the area of music recording.

For the category of distribution, we want to investigate how people in general are obtaining their music.  Are they buying CDs? Purchasing off of iTunes? Or perhaps are they downloading illegally online.  To answer this question we plan to use a survey that will ask these questions.  Our plan is to distribute our survey in class, which should give us approximately a forty person sample size.  Since it is a college class with students of varying ages, this should give us a pretty good representation of how people are getting their music.

In the final area for our project, music performance, we will apply standard research methods to report on how modern technology is changing music performance.  Obviously the best way to research this subject would be to interview a performing band; however, this could be difficult to accomplish.